I’m thankful Trixie didn’t say anything when I came up to Al. I just realized I would probably have a very hard time explaining a girly voice that sounded like it came out of me. They’d probably guess that I was “coming out of the closet,” and...honestly, that would probably be much easier for them to accept as opposed to telling them about a pony head in a trash can.
Al is usually a nice guy. He’s a loving family man, but values his job as security for the disposal facility. Once I bothered to ask why a trash dump needed a security guard; he gave me philosophical advice of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” When I shook my head at his answer, he clarified that sometimes people break in, attempting to find medication for their quick-fix. I didn’t question his job ever again; I know expired medication is a bad thing, but I guess junkies will overlook that.
He’s also notorious for pestering Mike every time I visit. He told me that he actually bets on me losing something one day just to get something from Mike. It’s a good thing he’s easy to bribe; the man loves clogging his heart as much as giving Mike a hard time letting me in.
As I walked through the main entrance to the facility, the tell-tale signs of a busy Friday reached my ears. A truck had just pulled in and was now dumping its disgusting cargo onto a large conveyor belt running along the sides of the walls and across a majority of the floor. Various sanitation workers dressed in white plastic bodysuits, blue nylon gloves, safety goggles, air-filtration masks, black rubber boots, and semi-transparent hairnets sorted through the trash. They picked out whatever recyclable objects they could find like various aluminum cans, clean cardboard, soda and water bottles, milk jugs, electronics and batteries, tossing them all into marked and color-coded containers for proper disposal in other sections of the facility.
Any trash that remains is guided toward an incinerator in the back, which lashes out in flame and thick black smoke as it enjoys the scraps left behind by the workers. Air vents are positioned above the incinerator to filter out the black smoke belching out of the machine. One normally wouldn’t see this black smoke billowing out of here because they’ve set up multiple layers of air filters within the ventilation to absorb as much filth as possible. Mike actually took me up to see these filters when the incinerator wasn’t running one day, and let me tell you, those suckers looked like charcoal sheets. Mike told me they needed to be replaced every two days (sometimes every day), and after seeing those filters, I had no doubt that was true.
One of the unique things about this place is the smell, as it changes every time I visit here, even if most of the items making up the stench are the same. If I told you that the smell today consisted of rotten eggs, week-old curdled milk, and the remains of a public school’s lunch scraps, that wouldn’t even remotely do it justice. If I added in the scents of industrial-strength sanitizers, spoiled fruit, rotten meat and bleach by the gallon, the very scent itself would laugh at my pathetic description of it. I could even add in the smells of discarded cat litter, rat piss, dog crap and human vomit, and it would all pale in describing the stench currently assaulting my nose. When I first came here and saw those air vents filtering out the smoke, some vain part of my mind hoped that it would also vacuum out this horrid smell. Ten or so visits later, it accepted the reality that this place just stinks, and now devotes as much time as it can to making sure I don’t hurl and add seasoning to the smell.
Above me was my destination, an office set up to overlook the facility from above. Suspended by thick steel bars jutting from the roof and metal scaffolding below it, it acts as the central hub through which most orders are directed in this facility. Wire-mesh stairs circled around the square tower to the floor, allowing for a rather impressive visual tour of the place...well, if you find trash disposal interesting, anyway.
There was also a console at the top of the stairway. Mike told me that it was responsible for controlling most of the machinery here, most notably the operation of the incinerator and the conveyor belt. Depending on how much garbage the truck brings in and the amount of sorters available, the speed of the belt is adjusted accordingly to give a fair amount of time for the trash to be picked through before reaching the incinerator.
A few of the sanitation workers noticed me and waved at me. I’ve sort of become a regular face to see here thanks to my terrible disposal habits. Roughly every one to two weeks, I throw something away in the trash that I probably shouldn’t. It’s usually my wallet that ends up in there, but once it was my car keys...and another time it was my cell phone.
That was a fun trip, chasing down the garbage truck because I couldn’t call Mike to let him know that I lost my phone...because my phone was in the trash. The irony of the situation was painful that day, and the garbage truck driver decided to be a blab and tell Mike about it. He hasn’t stopped teasing me about it since, and despite my diligence to make sure something like this never happened again...well, it did. And it wasn’t even something of mine this time.
After ascending the scaffolding leading up to the office, I knocked on the door to Mike’s office. Upon seeing my solemn face, he couldn’t help but wear that trademark goof of a grin he has.
As he rose to unlock the door, he greeted me. “Morning, Ian. You came a little later than expected.”
I took a moment to remind myself of the layout of his office. It was tidy...well, “tidy” is a relative term to use considering where he works. Mike kept his desk mostly clean, outside of a few crumbs of bread from the sandwiches he gets from a nearby Subway. His computer had an Excel spreadsheet on the screen, most likely related to budget management. He was a supervisor after all, so it wasn’t surprising to see him poring over financials.
A picture of his wife and children sat next to his computer, a nice little reminder of his family and why he works in such a nasty place like this. I wish I had the sort of motivation he had for working a job like this. Maybe if I had some amount of fiscal and personal responsibility to uphold, to maintain besides my own well-being...
He had crumpled-up post-it notes scattered all about the floor, most of them gathered around a small trash can he had placed in the far corner of the room. For a moment, I was thankful Trixie didn’t show up in that trash can instead of mine; I have a feeling she’d be pissed beyond belief to have a barrage of paper balls assault her with no way of escaping. At least with my can she had an escape route...of sorts.
“Uh, hello? Earth to Ian. What took you so long?”
“Car troubles, Mike. Two flat tires.”
“Whoa, seriously? Like, at the same time?”
“Yep.”
“Dude, how did you even manage that?”
“I don’t know, and it’s not even worth asking about. I came here for the hat, remember?”
“Right. The garbage truck pulled in about fifteen minutes ago, and I had its contents put into a dumpster just outside the back door. I hope you’re ready to do some divin’.”
“Aren’t I always whenever I lose something moderately important, Mike?”
“Like your cell phone? Or your car keys?”
“Mike, now is NOT the time to remind me of those incidents!”
“Ian, every time you come here is the perfect time to remind you of your klutzy actions. You’d probably lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on tight.”
“That analogy doesn’t even make any sense!”
“Dr. Seuss thought it did.”
“...you still watch those old cartoons?”
“...you remember that I have a wife and two kids, right?”
“Point taken. Anyway, I’m ready to start dumpster diving.”
“Great! I got a spare suit hanging over on a rack to your right, as usual.”
“Oh crap, I completely forgot about wearing the suit! Trixie will stick out like a sore thumb that way!”
I walked over to the suit rack and pulled off the bungee cord sling holding Trixie. I grabbed the suit and hung the cord on the rack, thinking that I was sly as a fox with how smooth I was with swapping the suit for her.
“Uh...dude, what was that?”
“What was what?”
“That thing you did. It looked like you took off an invisible purse.”
“What? Oh-uh, I had a sudden itch on my shoulder, but it went away.”
“...riiiiight. Ian, if you wanted to come out of the closet, you could have picked a much easier way to say it.”
“WHAT?! Nonono, it’s seriously an itch and-”
Mike laughed. “Relax buddy, I’m just messing with your head.”
“You do that way too often,” I said as I began putting on the suit.
He shrugged. “Gotta entertain myself somehow, and you’re a good source of humor, Ian.”
“Most of it at my expense…”
“Hey, I can’t help it if you do idiotic things like tossing important things into the trash. I’m just an agent of karma here.”
“I need a new agent.”
Mike chuckled. “Sorry Ian, they’re fresh out. Looks like you’re stuck with me.”
I sighed, zipping up the suit and putting on the gloves. “Can we just get this over with? I’m ready.”
“Sure, let’s go. As fun as it is to keep you here for my entertainment, we’ve got a hat to find.”
I didn’t have time to explain to Trixie what was going on. I just hope that she picked up on the fact that I couldn’t take her with me over to the dumpster so she could use that magic spell she mentioned earlier. Maybe she could use it from inside the office or something, and if so that would make our search for it much easier to accomplish.
“Please, Trixie, for the love of God, don’t do anything crazy.”
As Mike and I descended down the stairs, we caught up on more small talk. He told me about his family and how his daughter Elsa recently celebrated her seventh birthday. He’s not a big fan of large parties, so they just kept it within their home, and only invited their closest family members.
I told him about how funny I thought his Centrum Silver gag was, and he laughed. I also told him about the incident that happened that night...albeit with a changed detail where Trixie was replaced with a giant spider. He laughed even harder at that, knowing how much I hate spiders.
Soon, we reached the back door, and Mike opened it, revealing a sea of dumpsters beyond. He pointed out the dumpster holding the contents of my trash (and others along the truck’s route), a stepladder standing in front of it to allow access from the top.
“Alright, you happen to remember what kind of trash bag you used? That should narrow things down,” Mike said as he climbed onto the stepladder and hopped into the dumpster.
As I ascended the stepladder, I thought back to the moment where I bagged up the trash, and remembered blue plastic drawstrings on the bag.
“Blue drawstrings.”
“Ooh, good memory. A lot of the drawstrings we normally see here are white, red, or yellow. Blue’s less common, so this should be quick.”
An inward sigh of relief took place in my head. Maybe I didn’t need her spell after all to find the hat if Mike was ri-
“Uh, Ian? We might have a problem here.”
I gulped. “What kind of problem, Mike?”
“‘A lot of blue strings’ kind of problem.”
“Well, sh-”